Curiosity has a special New Year’s Eve message from Mars

Tonight, the Mars Curiosity rover will be sending a commemorative note to us Earthlings to celebrate the new year.

On Twitter, the anthropomorphized bot announced, “Will you be in @TimesSquareNYC for New Year’s Eve? Look for a special message from Mars on the giant Toshiba screens.”

The Toshiba LEDs at One Times Square will display the official New Year’s Eve countdown (Toshiba is the exclusive sponsor for the Official Countdown of the Times Square 2013 New Year’s Eve Celebration), and the company estimates more than one billion people around the world will be tuning into the broadcast this evening.

The Toshiba display will include a 60-second countdown to 2013 in the Eastern time zone, and it will also feature hourly countdowns and the Curiosity message, which Toshiba said includes a NASA-produced animation.